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Patient Care Assistant Jackki Patrick, Telecommunications Operator Rosie Brooks, Occupational Therapist Carly Sanders, Social Worker Ruth Crowe, Pediatric Audiologist Heather Stenger, Ortho Tech Wilie Williams, Ambassador Cameron Lewis, and Pharmacy Technician Marques Williams were among the NUHW members included in stories about the strike launched on Wednesday, June 18, by workers at 1,300 NUHW members at Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland who are being forced to become UCSF employees, a move that would cause them to lose their union and reduce their take-home pay by about $10,000 annually on average, primarily due to higher health and retirement benefit costs. Several media, including the East Bay Times, KQED, KTVU, KPIX, NBC11, KRON, KALW, Becker’s Hospital Review, Oaklandside, Patch, ABC7, KALW, MSN, Local News Matter, San Francisco Chronicle, Becker’s Hospital Review, and KCBS News Radio covered the work stoppage that seeks to halt the University of California’s planned integration of the hospital with San Francisco-based UCSF Health.
The San Francisco Chronicle quoted NUHW member Cameron Adams and reported on our position with regard to establishing minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in for-profit psychiatric hospitals. “Employers often blame a nursing shortage for unsafe staffing, but the real issue is the lack of good jobs offering fair pay, benefits, and safe working conditions,” said Adams, a registered nurse at Sacramento Behavioral Healthcare Hospital, during a meeting to consider competing staffing proposals. “Establishing and enforcing numeric ratios in acute psychiatric hospitals is a crucial first step to retaining both new and experienced nurses.”
Citing the Trump Administration’s targeting of gender-affirming care, lower Medi-Cal reimbursement rates and its “fragile” fiscal position, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles — one of the country’s oldest and largest providers of gender-affirming care for children and young adults — has announced that it will close its Center for Transyouth Health and Development on July 22. LAist reported that the hospital said it could only sustain operations for approximately 50 days without federal funding.
As California grapples with a $12 billion budget deficit, the state’s peer-run phone service that provides free 24/7 mental health support to thousands of residents across the state could face deep funding cuts, or even a shutdown, CalMatters reported. The California Peer Run Warm Line — which is different from 911 and the federal 988 mental health crisis line because it is intended for non-emergencies — receives an average of 20,000 calls, texts and chats a month from people seeking emotional support and mental health resources.
Bloomberg reported that health care, social services, food preparation, and personal care workers such as hair stylists and childcare providers reported the highest rates of depression in a new nationwide survey. More than one-in-five people in those professions said they had been diagnosed with depression, well above the 14 percent of all workers surveyed between 2015 and 2019. Governor Gavin Newsom wants to block a California law from taking effect next year that will require nursing homes to have a 96-hour backup power supply (currently, it is six hours), potentially giving the industry a reprieve from having to spend over $1 billion in capital investments. California Healthline reported that the governor tucked the suspension into his budget update to address a projected $12 billion state deficit. If lawmakers go along, it will be the second time nursing homes have forestalled spending on generators or other power supplies required to keep ventilators, feeding and IV pumps, and medication dispensing machines running during emergencies, such as wildfires.
